The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus that, when a part of functional units thereof generates a malfunction, effectively uses another functional unit free from a malfunction, and relates to an image processing system including the imaging processing apparatus and a server apparatus.
Conventionally, various methods have been proposed for utilizing an image forming apparatus effectively by connecting a plurality of image forming apparatuses via a network. In such an environment with a plurality of image forming apparatuses connected via a network, when a malfunction occurs in one of the image forming apparatuses, a job will concentrate on another image forming apparatus free from malfunctions (hereinafter called a normally operating image forming apparatus), so that such a normally operating image forming apparatus will be overloaded. Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-265932 describes an image forming apparatus that, when a malfunction occurs in an image forming unit, disables image forming functions using the image forming unit only, while enabling functions not using the image forming unit such as a scan function and a fax function.
In the image forming apparatus described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-265932, however, a normally operating image forming apparatus is used for the disabled image forming functions, and therefore jobs concerning image forming functions will concentrate on such an image forming apparatus, and the normally operating image forming apparatus will be overloaded. Therefore, waiting time in the normally operating image forming apparatus will be increased between accepting of a request for execution for a job and executing of the job.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a management apparatus, an image processing apparatus and an image processing system capable of reducing a load and waiting time for a job in a normally operating image forming apparatus so as to improve user's convenience.